Encouragement to Boris Johnson to reset

 To: the Rt Hon Boris Johnson

Copy: Iain Stewart, MP, Milton Keynes South

Dear Boris Johnson

 Can I commend you on the widely-reported intent to “reset” if that is indeed your intent.

I would like to applaud this possible future direction, but allow me first to recognise the dark place that we need to move forward from.

 Lord Evans’s speech on standard in public life very clearly explains that winning an election should not be considered to be a mandate that then allows procurement to cronies. politicised appointments and breaches of the Ministerial code. The decline in public standards and ethics that we have seen in 2020 is not justified simply because the current Government has a large majority.

He said

“ I am not a member of any political party but very concerned at the erosion of democracy and honesty. I fear for my children and their children having to live with the consequences of the lack of public accountability”.

“These members of the public are concerned by the perception that those in public life no longer feel obliged to follow the so-called Nolan principles of selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty and leadership - otherwise known as the Seven Principles of Public Life.”

 I commend you if you are now going to use a substantial change of staff and a substantial change of Ministers to set a different course. In procurement and in public appointments, the process should be fair and should be seen to be fair. The extent to which associates of politicians and advisers have appeared to benefit by senior appointments or lucrative contracts which they were not qualified to fulfil and on which in some cases they failed leaves massive doubt as to the fairness of the process.

Indeed, what a dreadful impression was given when the Government attempted to block the Good Law Project from questioning procurements, not on the grounds that the procurements were fair, but on the basis that the Good Law Project "had no standing" - legal jargon for "none of your business". But it is the Public's business; faulty procurement wastes our money and has procured PPE that is inadequate, and damaged the market because honest suppliers are deterred from compering if the market is or appears to be fixed. If the Government had provided some argument that the procurements were fair then at least that could have been assessed, but instead it chose to hide the process behind a legal manoeuvre which I am pleased to see has rightly failed. But surely you can see how this promotes an impression of dodgy dealing that does not want to be examined - as does any attempt to cripple the very necessary public safeguard of Judicial Review.

Advisers with no respect for evident standards of integrity have influenced your Government in a dark direction, but now is the time to turn a new page.

You have inexperienced people who are understandably struggling and plaintively crying that they are working night and day but who lack the rigour and expertise needed. But you could have access to that rigour and expertise. I know how effectively DFID, and the DEC, for example, work towards outcome-based targets. I know this from my experience of dealing with DFID, for example on a £25 million budget concerned with the successful eradication of Ebola in Sierra Leone – and similar experiences with projects in Kenya, Ethiopia, Nepal, Sudan and Syria. What a positive and unifying gesture it would be to show that you had changed your approach and were looking for the skills of a Justine Greening, a Rory Stewart or even a David Miliband as the dedicated leader of the overall UK response to the pandemic. And if you demonstrated to any of these people that you were someone they could work with, then that would be a very positive statement to the country.

 You also have MPs in Parliament who are not in your Cabinet but who are people of experience and integrity, serving their constituencies and/or in important roles on Select Committees, who would want to serve in a government with higher standards of integrity and who would enhance it and help to change the culture.

 You have one chance, following the clear signal given by the staffing changes, to reflect during self-isolation and emerge as a new leader for a new decade, with lessons learned from the mistakes of 2020 which should not be repeated – and should not be denied, because not to learn from them is to repeat them.

 How can you unify the country on Brexit? The majority would prefer not to sever ties with the EC 27. Your ambition to be ready to end Transition in December 2020 has clearly failed, and any departure now would leave business no time to prepare, whether for a Deal or for No Deal. No-one on any side of the argument could rationally object to an emergency-driven negotiated extension to the Transition period. This should be long enough to allow a path towards unity; if the benefits projected for Leaving can in fact be achieved, given adequate time to negotiate such a settlement allowing for example full access to the Single Market as promised, effective Customs agreements that do not add friction, and no adverse impact on Ireland, then let there be time for the Brexiters to negotiate what they said was possible, what you yourself based your “Leave” argument upon.

Let us then recognise that we are in a new situation and that any decision invoking “the Will of the People” must be based on the Will of the People in the 2020s, emerging as we have done through a sea change in the history of this island nation. People brandishing yesterday’s slogans will become yesterday’s men. New leadership is needed for the 2020s; you have shown your flexibility in the past by wearing the clothes of the Hard Brexiters when you felt that was popular; are you stuck in that rut of the last decade, or can you emerge as the leader needed for the 2020s?

 Yours sincerely

Mike Cashman